It's hard not to feel some sympathy for the Wescotts. They adopted the boy two years ago, but he spent the last year in a psychiatric facility after trying to burn their house down and leaving a note that said, "Sorry you have to die." He's violent, kills animals, stashed butcher's knives under his bed, and he's been diagnosed with "reactive detachment disorder, disruptive behavior disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and fetal alcohol syndrome," according to ABC News.

The Wescotts say they knew what they could handle and requested a child who wasn't "violent or acting out sexually." Since the Oklahoma Department of Human Services claimed he was "well-behaved," "respectful toward authority," and had no significant behavioral problems, they say that when he returns from an inpatient psychiatric hospital in January, they should be able to dissolve the adoption and put him back foster care.

Other parents in the Wescott's adoption support group are backing their fight to make it legal in Oklahoma for adoptive parents to return their child if the he or she turns out to be violent. The state counters that it warns all parents that the children grew up in abusive homes and are likely to have emotional and behavioral problems.

While Melissa Wescott says, "It's not like we're trying to return an itchy sweater," in some ways it is. They didn't promise to take care of the boy unless things didn't work out, and if their biological 11-year-old son developed psychiatric problems, abandoning him would be considereed illegal. Obviously, the Wescotts need help caring for their son. But, with so many adoptive parents fighting to be recognized as their child's "real" parents, creating a law that makes adoption less permanent isn't the answer.

Oklahoma Couple Want To Return Troubled Adopted Son To State [ABC News]

In a heart-wrenching LA Times article, Joe Markman reports that many child prostitutes can't simply be returned to their family homes. Richard Estes, a social policy professor at UPenn, says, "Most of the girls that have run away and are on the streets have run away because of sexual abuse." Lisa Goldblatt Grace, a consultant for the Health and Human Services Department, concurs: she says underage prostitutes and sex trafficking victims "lack a safe, stable place to live, and that's part of what made them vulnerable to begin with." Estes says kids who escape prosecution need "a rebuilding and remolding of personality and character." Instead, they end up in group homes, inadequate foster homes, or even prison, on "material witness hold." Only three organizations in the country offer residential programs for former child prostitutes, meaning just 44 beds exist for between 100,000 and 300,000 victims.

Adult prostitution may be a controversial issue, but keeping kids out of the sex trade — and offering help to those who do fall into it — seems like a no-brainer. But Markman quotes former LA detective Keith Haight uttering one of the saddest sentences I've heard in a long time: "A lot of places don't want to take responsibility for girls that are known to be sexually active." The idea that sexually active girls somehow become damaged goods that no one wants to deal with is incredibly depressing, but it's just another illustration of the grim fact that America doesn't know how to help kids who violate a certain ideal of innocence. We try child criminals as adults, because we think "real" kids don't commit crimes — and when kids get involved in sex or drugs, they become "undesirable," even though they are the ones who most need care. According to Markman, there's been a trend in recent years against prosecuting child prostitutes, which is a step in the right direction. But his article drives home the fact that child prostitution isn't just a problem of developing countries — it's happening right here, and we suck at dealing with it.

Image via LA Times.

Rescued Child Prostitutes Not Receiving Help [LA Times]

While about 10% of new moms get depression, a 2005 study showed that 4% of dads had significant symptoms as well. Richard Friedman writes in the New York Times that a drop in testosterone associated with a partner's pregnancy may cause depression. But life changes may be a factor as well. Friedman writes of a male patient who lamented, "We go out a lot with friends to dinner and theater. Now I guess that's all going to end." And the biggest risk factor for male postpartum depression is having a depressed partner — dads whose partners are depressed are two and a half times more likely to suffer themselves. Friedman points out,

Unlike women, men are not generally brought up to express their emotions or ask for help. This can be especially problematic for new fathers, since the prospect of parenthood carries all kinds of insecurities: What kind of father will I be? Can I support my family? Is this the end of my freedom?

Not only are men not encouraged to share their emotions — they're widely considered not to have as many emotions where children are concerned. Commenter Zorba on the Times' Well blog writes,

I am so relieved to see this. This connects with my long-held suspicion (that no one will validate) that MOST MEN DO NOT WANT CHILDREN. As a woman, I hear women complain all the time about how men don't get how difficult it is to be pregnant, have a baby, be a mother but these are the same women who were giving their husbands ultimatums when the men didn't want to get pregnant and even (more often than you'd think) lying and leaving off birth control to have a baby regardless of their husband's feelings. This makes me sad because I would like to think that fatherhood is something men really want but most of the men I hear about are bamboozled into it. Do men even want kinds? Is that why they get depressed?

But Zorba could just as easily say that women don't want kids, because they suffer from postpartum depression more often than men. Unfortunately, several male commenters chime in to reinforce the old stereotype that men who have kids are just giving in to their wives. Says Calmd,

Based on the comments of the women, why do women want kids anyway? After our first, my wife wanted more. I said no way. Our child is 12 but my wife still resents wish not to have more kids.

Sounds awesome. But not as awesome as this, by Penumbranian:

Children change everything irreversibly. They cost time, energy, money and space. The spatial and temporal boundaries shift, your spouse pays less attention to you, even totally ignores you. Does she still love you? Did she choose you to have children only? My wife was yelling at me: "My biological clock is ticking! With you or without you I'm going to have children!" Perhaps I had children with her only to please her, to be kept by her, not to be dumped by her.
Yes, your freedom will be lost. I know a couple who did not go to see a movie for five years after they had a child. This is widely considered normal.
If a father should talk about these and related concerns, like I did, he may be labelled as "immature" or worse, like I was.

What both of these comments underscore is the need to talk about children before you get married. When one partner wants them much more than the other, resentment and depression can easily result. Despite the words of Calmd and Penumbranian, it's not always the woman who wants kids more. However, women do bear a greater physical, and often a greater social burden in pregnancy and child-rearing. Writes D.J.,

Hmm, the men don't give birth, don't carry a child for nine months, don't have hormonal or weight fluctuations, swollen ankles, stretch marks, sleepless nights when there is no comfortable position in bed, heartburn, morning sickness, but they want to suffer from post-partum depression. Then, they usually aren't the ones nursing, or have a body trying to return to it's pre-pregnancy status. They typically aren't the ones getting up in the middle of the night to feed or calm the baby, run the rest of the household if there are other children and still have a smidgen of time for themselves. My husband was a helpful as the next one, but given everything that a man doesn't go through, it sounds like whining to me.

It's true that men don't have to go through the physical changes of pregnancy. And it's true that expectations of moms are still higher than expectations of dads. But that doesn't mean men aren't emotionally invested. A commenter who identifies himself as "a medical student and father" writes,

Fathers don't want to suffer from postpartum depression- No one wants to suffer from depression! Depression is not a ‘badge of honor' for all the hardships they have been through- depression is a terrible and crippling (sometimes fatal) disease. Its true that there is likely a different hormonal aspect to the depression but the fact of the matter is we, the scientific community, do not know what causes depression or what combination of hundreds or thousands of bio-psycho-social factors lead to a depressive episode. Whether you label it postpartum depression for women or after pregnancy depression for men, its depression.

The important point is that doctors, like everyone else should be aware of who is at risk and try to understand, treat and hopefully relieve suffering.

Doctors do need to be aware of male postpartum depression — and perhaps we all need to be more inclusive when it comes to a father's role. Many men are still trained to view involved parenting as somehow feminine, and they need to resist this training. At the same time, though, if we as a society want men to share equally in the mundane parts of parenting, the "getting up in the middle of the night to feed or calm the baby," we need to acknowledge that they share in the emotional parts as well. Male postpartum depression may feel like "whining" when women still bear the brunt of child-rearing responsibility, but treating this depression can also be a step towards accepting men's emotional investment in the family and channeling this investment into actual time spent with kids. Children may affect men more than they're currently encouraged to admit — and recognizing this would be good for everyone.

Postpartum Depression Strikes Fathers, Too [NYT]
When New Fathers Get Depressed [NYT Well Blog]

Groskop explains that she's dissatisfied with her kids' current bedtime-story fare, and wants something that will teach them feminist gender roles. She writes,

We often read Captain Pugwash and Asterix – but there are no girls in those stories. I was happy with Babar until Celeste became pregnant with triplets and never came out of the nursery again. In Peepo the mother is always ironing. Of course, there are some successes for both boys and girls. Ludwig Bemelmans' Madeline is a wonderful tale of convent girl derring-do, with lots of boy characters, too. Julia Donaldson's books (The Gruffalo, The Smartest Giant in Town) are great fun, but not exactly politically inspiring. I wanted to find something feminist, subversive. The Female Eunuch for five-year-olds.

But while teaching little kids about gender equality is a worthwhile goal, some of the books Groskop tries don't sound very fun. Here's her precis of Girls Are Not Chicks, by Jacinta Bunnell and Julie Novak:

Some of the pictures and captions in this colouring book are funny. A woman riding a tractor: "Who says girls don't like to play in the dirt?" Two ballerinas dancing: "No one wants to fight the patriarchy alone. Make friends." But I'm not sure whether the messages are really for the amusement of children, or adults. One caption reads: "When she stopped chasing the dangling carrot of conventional femininity, she was finally able to savour being a woman." Try explaining that to a three-year-old.

Little kids aren't really known for their love of abstract concepts. What they are known for: resisting well-intentioned parental indoctrination of all kinds. Groskop's son had this to say about Pippi Longstocking, one of his mother's more inspired choices:

It was rubbish. It's stupid. I like Mr Nilsson [Pippi's pet monkey] and the father who was washed overboard and the mother who is up in heaven. Actually, no, it's not rubbish. It's really funny.

And on The Pirate Girl, by Cornelia Funke:

It's the best story in the whole world. Write this: I really like boats.

The problem with using fiction to teach political ideas to kids is that where you see feminism, they may see boats. And books that are specifically designed to teach kids something are often kind of lame. A better approach might be to offer kids exciting books with cool heroines, and let them learn from these that girls can be awesome. Groskop was on the right track with Pippi and Madeline. Other good ideas:

— Beverly Cleary's Ramona Quimby books
— Matilda, by Roald Dahl (also suggested to Groskop by feminist author Natasha Walter)
— David Adler's Cam Jansen mysteries
— Alice in Wonderland
— Anne of Green Gables
— Harriet the Spy
— Kay Thompson's Eloise books
— for slightly older readers, A Wrinkle in Time (although I was sad, in later L'Engle books, when Meg decided not to pursue a career because she felt she couldn't compete with her mom)

Raise kids on a diet of the above, and they'll be reading The Female Eunuch in no time. Or, you know, not. But at least you won't have to read aloud the phrase "the dangling carrot of conventional femininity," which is probably a reward in itself.

Image via Mulatto Diaries.

Feminist Books For Five-Year-Olds [Guardian]

It's a debate as old as...well, the 1960s. And in recent decades, the father's place in the delivery room has become sacrosanct - indeed, Iran just lifted a ban on men in the delivery room in the hopes that women would become more comfortable and natural birth would become more common. But now there are new voices challenging the status quo, including the rather inflammatory French obstetrician Michel Odent, who feels men actually harm the process. The good doctor will be debating the issue at the Royal College of Midwives.

Pros: Teamwork, solidarity, comfort, and the little fact that some fathers might want to see their children born, too. "With husbands coaching, we have more than 90% totally unmedicated births. No other approach comes near to that figure," says Robert Bradley, who was an early advocate of present fathers.

Cons: As Dr. Odent would have it, "the masculinisation of the birth environment". His argument?

Having been involved for more than 50 years in childbirths in homes and hospitals in France, England and Africa, the best environment I know for an easy birth is when there is nobody around the woman in labour apart from a silent, low-profile and experienced midwife...Oxytocin is the love drug which helps the woman give birth and bond with her baby. But it is also a shy hormone and it does not come out when she is surrounded by people and technology. This is what we need to start understanding.

However, is barring men from the delivery room, 1950s-style, really the solution? Surely it's an individual choice, right? And while nothing should be automatic - it's a conversation that bears having - is a convent-like level of silence the alternative? If we're going to bar anything, maybe it's video cameras that should be on the table - they're notoriously unsupportive. And the strongest argument? Moms don't seem that grateful for Dr. Odent's concern.

A Top Obstetrician On Why Men Should NEVER Be At The Birth Of Their Child [Daily Mail]

Should Dads Be In The Delivery Room? [BBC]
No Dads In the Delivery Room? [BlogHer]

Top OB: Keep Men Out Of Delivery Room [StrollerDerby]

The bad news: A new study, reported today in Eurekalert, confirms what everyone already knew, that increasingly younger girls are worried about their weight and appearance. And we do mean young: while the statistics were already depressing, this study dealt with children aged 3-to-6. Indeed, according to a study by University of Central Florida psychology professor Stacey Tantleff-Dunn and doctoral student Sharon Hayes, nearly half of these pre-schoolers "worry about being fat." And a third of those tested said they were dissatisfied with their appearance. According to Vernisha Shepard, a psychotherapist and clinical coordinator for the eating disorders clinic at Texas Children's Hospital"It is getting more and more common for young girls to begin to have concern regarding their bodies," she says. "Girls as young as 8 are now talking about their bodies and show a concern related to their weight and shape. When summer comes and people begin losing the layers of clothing, more attention is drawn to how we look. Young girls are learning this and basing their entire self worth on their bodies and beauty."

Here's how the test worked:

After chatting for several minutes, the playmate asked each girl how she feels about the way she looks. Thirty-one percent indicated they almost always worry about being fat, while another 18 percent said they sometimes worry about it....Half of the girls watched parts of animated children's movies such as Cinderella that featured young, beautiful characters and appearance-focused comments, such as Gaston telling Belle in Beauty and the Beast that she is "the most beautiful girl in town, and that makes her the best." The second group watched parts of animated children's movies such as Dora the Explorer and Clifford the Big Red Dog that do not contain any appearance-related messages....In a room that featured a dress-up rack of costumes, a vanity, dinosaurs and more, children then spent about the same amount of time on appearance-related play activities, such as brushing their hair at the vanity, regardless of which set of movies they watched.

The good (sort of) news? The kids weren't more affected by a film featuring a svelte princess, like the Princess and the Frog, than by anything else. So limiting princesses and Barbies alone isn't going to do the trick; indeed, they seemed to feel equally bad regardless of what they watched. And one can't help but wonder if conversations like those the children engaged in for this study weren't one more confirmation that this stuff is Important.

I'm glad, though, that this study got the princesses off the hook a little: it's always seemed to me too easy to blame Snow White when the pretty princesses are a constant that pre-dated the dramatic upswing in young kids' eating disorders. Do such films promote a conventional standard of beauty and equate it with virtue? Sure. But it's this in combination with Bratz, Pussycat Dolls, Obese and Pregnant and Man Versus Food that conspires to create a world of what the Atlantic aptly termed "moral panic." Ironically, if the problem with fairy tales is that beauty was "good," we need to realize that obesity has become even more resoundingly "bad," nowadays, and if kids pick up on one, they'll pick up on the other.

'Too Fat To Be A Princess?' [Eurekalert]
Bikini Babies [Recipes Today]
America's Moral Panic Over Obesity

Earlier: Girls And Body Image: It's Apparently Worse Than Ever

The backlash against overinvolved "helicopter" parents has been going on long time, and Nancy Gibbs's description of such people in Time will surprise no one who reads trend pieces. They buy Baby Kneepads! They monitor their kids at college, and even in their jobs! When their precious daughter forgets a necklace she needs for her "coordinated outfit," they race to school to drop it off!

More surprising than these stock Generation-Y anecdotes is the news that some parents are pushing back, not just with rebellious mommy-blogging, but with actual classes designed to curb their overparenting impulses. Gibbs describes one such class:

Eleven parents are sitting in a circle in an airy, glass-walled living room in south Austin, Texas, eating organic, gluten-free, nondairy coconut ice cream. This is a Slow Family Living class, taught by perinatal psychologist Carrie Contey and Bernadette Noll. "Our whole culture," says Contey, 38, "is geared around 'Is your kid making the benchmarks?' There's this fear of 'Is my kid's head the right size?' People think there's some mythical Good Mother out there that they aren't living up to and that it's hurting their child. I just want to pull the plug on that."

Truly committed de-overparenters can get Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, to "go into your home, weed out your kids' stuff, sort out their schedule, turn off the screens and help your family find space you didn't know you had, like a master closet reorganizer for the soul." Payne recommends that parents get rid of children's broken and outgrown toys, "pare down to the classics that leave the most to the child's imagination and create a kind of toy library kids can visit and swap from. Then build breaks of calm into their schedule so they can actually enjoy the toys." Paring down its possessions seems smart, but "toy library?" "Build breaks into their schedule?" These make fun sound like school, childhood sound like work, and de-overparenting sound a lot like, well, overparenting. In the same vein, "pulling the plug" on unrealistic ideals of motherhood is a worthy goal, but do parents really need a special class — complete with nondairy ice cream — in order to achieve it?

One dad, Matt, tells Gibbs that de-overparenting can be a tough transition. He says, "it's not every day that I consciously sit down and ask myself hard questions about how I want family life to be slower or better." But should the process of being a more relaxed parent really involve "hard questions?" Can't you just do it by, you know, relaxing? Can't parents just lighten up without making lightening up into yet another rulebound parenting project? When did parenting become a gerund anyway?

One point kind of gets lost in all the hysteria over helicopter parents: Gibbs writes, "It's a tricky line to walk, since studies link parents' engagement in a child's education to better grades, higher test scores, less substance abuse and better college outcomes. Given a choice, teachers say, overinvolved parents are preferable to invisible ones." And while she also says "helicopter parents can be found across all income levels," it's certainly easier to hover over your kid if you have the money for things like violin lessons, college admissions coaches, and de-overparenting classes. This is not to say that poorer families never have overparenting problems, but it might be wise to redirect some of the hysteria over helicopter parents towards making it easier for all parents to get an appropriate level of involvement in their children's education. Moms and dads who don't speak English or who work three jobs might not be able to harass teachers or overschedule their kids with extracurriculars, but they also have a harder time helping with homework and addressing kids' difficulties at school — and this might be a bigger problem than a few jerks with Baby Kneepads.

Can These Parents Be Saved? [Time]

Of course, food is often a touchy subject even in non-vegetarian homes. My desire to eat nothing but plain chicken and bagels throughout my childhood caused plenty of bitter fights, and contributed to my parents' early fear that my vegetarianism was just another form of pickiness. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I hated all foods with flavor so much, but I do know that kids start searching at a relatively young age for ways to exercise their own autonomy, and food choice is one of these ways. So should the children of vegetarians get to choose to eat meat?

Emily Sohn of the LA Times addresses several issues surrounding this question, including health. It's a common misconception that growing kids need meat to survive. I remember a sort of legend that made the rounds in college about a student who tried to raise her toddler vegan; all the kid's teeth fell out, and had to be replaced with metal ones. The metal is, I think, a dead giveaway that this story was bullshit (although I'd kind of like to get a look at little Johnny Steelfangs), but it's true that vegetarian and especially vegan diets for kids require a few tweaks. As Sohn says, small children may need calorie-rich foods like peanut butter because a vegetarian diet can otherwise fill them up without giving them enough energy. And breastfeeding vegan moms may need a B12 supplement. But horror stories aside, a meat-free diet shouldn't do kids physical harm.

Then there's the psychological angle. As Sohn points out, "school-age children in particular can become anxious when anything about them is different from their peers, including what they eat for lunch." This actually seems like an opportunity for educating kids about differences — after all, children are always going to stick out in some way, and if parents can teach them to stand up for what's in their lunchboxes, they may be better at standing up for what's in their heads.

What seems more difficult to negotiate is a kid's desire to separate herself from her parents — including their dietary restrictions. Of course, many parents exercise some control over what their kids eat, and in some religions, dietary rules have been passed down for millennia. But, as Sohn notes, "resentment can build up if foods are forbidden completely." And at some point, kids are going to have the opportunity to try a hamburger. Parents can tell their children why they believe vegetarianism is important, and they can make only vegetarian foods at home. But when it comes to the big, bad, omnivorous world, probably the best they can do is teach them to make informed choices and not to let anyone else think for them — including mom and dad.

Don't Make Food A Conflict For A Vegetarian Child [LA Times]
Nutritional Guidelines For Vegetarian Children [LA Times]

An at-home test of a woman's current ovarian reserve — and thus her likelihood of being able to conceive — has been available since spring. But Norbert Gleicher of the Center for Human Reproduction thinks he can go a step further, using a woman's genes to predict when her ovarian reserve will begin to fall. He has discovered that variations in the Fragile X or FMR1 gene are associated with early ovarian aging and thereby with an early drop in fertility. By testing this gene, he believes he can predict whether a young woman is at risk of early ovarian aging, and thus help her make decisions about when to try to conceive. Gleicher says,

Then you can sit down and have a discussion about her reproductive life plan. In other words, 'do you want to have your kids before you get your PhD, or afterwards?' If the answer is 'afterwards', OK, but maybe you want to freeze some eggs.

Of course, it's not quite that simple. Egg freezing, for one, is expensive and not a sure thing. And critics of Gleicher's research say he still needs to do follow-up studies to determine whether women with the genetic markers for early ovarian aging actually have trouble conceiving. Writing in New Scientist, Linda Geddes says,

[A] test reliable enough to transform the lives of a large number of women will likely involve a series of genetic and hormonal markers. It will also need rigorous testing to ensure woman aren't burdened with anxiety - or given false hope.

Her last sentence seems key: Gleicher's test would need to be pretty foolproof for women to be able to plan their lives around it, especially because such planning tends to be messier than he lets on. Deciding when to have a child depends on a lot of factors besides how your Ph.D. research is going — women have to consider their finances, their health, whether they want to raise the kid with a partner and whether they've met that partner yet, and simply whether it feels like the right time for them to reproduce. A reliable test to predict future fertility would give women information to help them make these decisions, but they'll probably never be easy or cut-and-dried.

Of course, there are ways society could make them easier. Subsidized child care and better maternity leave would be a couple. Another comes up in the Daily Mail coverage of Gleicher's research. The old Fail isn't as obnoxious as usual on this, beyond a weird photo of a woman looking pensive while pressing her head to a man's belly (is he pregnant?). But the article, by David Derbyshire, does start with the line, "A DNA test that can tell a women in her early 20s how long she has left to start a family is being developed by scientists." This is a relatively small linguistic quibble, but Gleicher's test doesn't measure "how long a woman has left to start a family" — it measures how long she may have to conceive a child from her own eggs. There are other ways to "start a family," like adoption, and plenty of couples think of themselves as a family even if they don't have kids. If we reformed adoption laws to make adoption easier and more affordable, more kids might find homes and women could stop tying their ability to raise children so directly to their egg reserves. And if we gave child-free people their due as valid families, maybe we'd also stop viewing a woman's ability to reproduce as a measure of her value. More information about women's fertility would be a good thing — but it's worth remembering that no genetic test is going to magically make our reproductive lives easy.

Genes Show When A Woman's Biological Clock Will Stop [New Scientist]
DNA Fertility Test Warns Women How Long They Have Left To Start A Familys [Daily Mail]

Mark Bowden tells the story of J, a 42-year-old man who spent a year in jail for using a chat room to set up an assignation with a mother and her underage daughters — except that the "mother" was Detective Michele Deery, the daughters didn't exist, and J swears he was never interested in children in the first place. A lot of things about J make him seem untrustworthy — he was using steroids at the time, which gave him a runaway sex drive. He spent hours in cybersex chat rooms, playing out involved sexual fantasies with strangers while his wife slept. And he was willing to describe graphic sexual scenarios with children. But there's also a lot of evidence to suggest J was entrapped.

J says he had learned from experience that in order to interest women in chat rooms, you had to be willing to entertain their particular fantasies. Deery, masquerading as a user named "heatherscutiepies," seemed to want to talk about someone having sex with her daughters — so he indulged her. When the time came to set up a real-life meeting, he kept trying to make a date with just "Heather," but she kept bringing the girls back into it. She said things like,

-ur flip floppin its confusing me ... i mean it just seems like ur more into me then all of us..thats all

And:

-u say ur not really just into me, but it is still odd to me that you just wanna meet ME..

And:

-here is a tidbit of info ... i can do all that w out you here ... so clearly you are more into me then all of us whch is fine but u should be upfront about that from the get go

As Bowden mentions, these statements could be seen as Deery offering J an out, giving him a chance to say that he was really only interested in adult women so that she could leave them alone. And it was certainly stupid and reprehensible for J to respond as he did — repeatedly reassuring "Heather" that he was interested in her daughters after all. Even worse, he agreed to have sex with all of them — first with Heather alone, and then with the girls when they came home from school. J swears his plan was to flee after sleeping with Heather, but this claim didn't get him out of jail time, the dissolution of his marriage, or a lifetime on a sex offender registry.

It's hard to tell if J is telling the truth. He claims that everything he said about the girls was just an attempt to give Heather what she wanted so that she would sleep with him, but most right-thinking people would probably balk at offering to commit statutory rape just to get laid. On the other hand, unlike most child molesters, J didn't have any child porn on computer, and there's no evidence he ever hurt an actual child. J may be a bad guy, or least a sick one, but he also may have been a waste of a detective's time.

Bowden writes persuasively that the hysteria over online child predators is misguided. Some of it, he says, is based on faulty statistics — like the idea that one in five kids has been sexually solicited over the Internet. Bowden writes,

[H]alf the solicitations came from other teenagers. Not a single solicitation led to actual sexual contact. Violent sexual predators hunting children are out there, as they have always been, yet they remain blessedly rare, and most young people flee such strangeness instinctively. Only 3 percent of the contacts reported in the survey resembled the one most feared by parents, the adult stranger attempting to seduce a child.

And, somewhat disturbingly, Bowden reveals that people like J are "many times more likely to be locked up for approaching detectives than children." Would J have gone on to molest children if Deery hadn't "caught" him? It's possible, but it doesn't seem all that likely, and children face much more pressing dangers than J (Bowden also notes that missing children are more likely to have gotten lost or been kidnapped by a family member than abducted by a sex offender). The image of the online predator is a convenient one — a wholly evil person whose capture and punishment makes children safer. But protecting children is more complicated than that, the dangers they face more various and amorphous than a bad man lurking in a chat room. Unfortunately, nobody wants to stand up for men like J, and so the practice of creating false scenarios to catch sex offenders will probably continue — even if it means making sex offenders of some men who wouldn't be otherwise. But law enforcement energy might be better spent elsewhere, and perhaps we as a society should redirect our attention to problems that actually harm actual children — not men who solicit made-up girls.

Image via Vanity Fair.

A Crime Of Shadows [Vanity Fair]

The article opens:

Young Rubina Ali's social diary has been more than full these last few months: a trip to Paris, a tea party in Westminster in London, a dance show in Hong Kong, product endorsements and numerous trips in and out of India for award shows and to promote the Slumdog Millionaire child actor's autobiography, Slumgirl Dreaming. However, the school she attends in Mumbai along with her co-star, Azhar Mohammad, is not happy with either her attendance or her attitude. School officials say that the little girl, who once always greeted her teachers politely in the morning, now disregards them - that is, when she finds the time to attend school. Her father defends her against her teachers, saying Rubina is just a child and is under a lot of pressure.

There are issues with both of the children attending school as promised. Despite the monthly stipend they receive for maintaining 70% attendance, both Rubina and Azhar attend school less than 40% of the time. Now, Rubina and Azhar are just kids - however, as children they're more easily manipulated. Time reports:

The Jai Ho trust was also charged with finding suitable housing for the children, outside of the slums. While Shamim and Azhar have moved to their new 250 sq.ft apartment in Santa Cruz West, Rafiq has refused to move out of the slum, saying that 2,500,000 rupees ($50,000) is not enough to buy a flat. "I wanted to live in Bandra, as it is near to Rubina's school and I don't want her to travel a lot to get to school everyday. Can you get a flat in Bandra for that amount? I asked them to increase the budget a little bit to around 4,000,000 Rupees ($80,000) so that I could buy a flat there. But they refused. So what can I do?"

Interestingly, in an earlier post exploring Rubina and Azhar's post-movie lives, the original reason for the reluctance to move was stated a bit differently:

Although Boyle has offered to buy Rubina's family an apartment like Azhar's, her father has refused. He says he does not want to live anywhere but the Bandra neighborhood because all of his work contacts are located there.

In addition, while Time quotes Rubina's father as saying she "burnt her foot," other reports say Rubina is busy working on fashion shows and modeling shoots. I would actually expect this behavior from her family, down to lying to teachers about her whereabouts - after all, child stars face the same complications here, especially when a parent realizes that their child's take home pay could surpass his or her own income. But the problem here is that we can't be sure what Rubina wants versus the will of her father. We also don't know if Rubina will eventually come to resent going to school - after all, the world of work is very appealing. Many children around the world leave school early voluntarily, in pursuit of money and independence in the job market. While Rubina may have been a quiet, obedient student before, it's clear now that her world view has changed.

The same thing has happened to Azhar. As the Washington Post reported a few months ago:

His mother, Shamim, who married at 16 and has only an elementary-school education herself, says Azhar is bright but sometimes doesn't want to go to school. Azhar is having trouble adjusting to his notoriety, which has led to fights with classmates.

Maybe that's because at just 11 Azhar is the most successful person he knows. He has become the family patriarch, putting food on the table and even lifting the extended family out of the slums and into a middle-class neighborhood.

"Why should I go to school," he recently told a teacher. "I'm an actor."

After Danny Boyle gave him a laptop, Azhar got frustrated that no one in his family knew how to get Internet service so he could play video games.

This may be more pronounced for Rubina, who explains:

"I think back to what my life was like before the movie," she said, as she thumb-wrestled with visitors. "No one ever asked who I was or what I thought about anything."

Perhaps her diva like behavior is a result of her newfound status and financial power, something that she never experienced before the film. (The Jai Ho foundation, which is monitoring the children's progress and keeping the bulk of their film money in a trust until they turn eighteen, has pledged to help the families by taking a number of actions.)

However, as we've seen countless times (Drew Barrymore, for starters), children are not always equipped to navigate stardom... and neither are their parents. Reading through these pieces, I felt a continuous ping of concern for Rubina. I'm a bit uncomfortable making a judgment about her parents - some of the articles have more than a whiff of Western paternalism, and, of course, the media loves to box people into "hero" and "villain" roles.

Still, Rubina's father's reluctance to leave the slums where they live, combined with other incidents, may indicate that he is not going to be the best guardian. There isn't much good that can come of a greedy parent and a child with the potential for a high income.

Has Fame Spoiled The Slumdog Millionaire Kids? [Time]
Life After 'Slumdog' Full Of Promise — And Skeletons [Washington Post]
'Slumdog Millionaire' Trust says it's looking after child star Rubina Ali [Entertainment Weekly]

Earlier:Life After Slumdog
Irreconcilable Differences: When Kids Dump Their Parents

The Times's Laurie Tarkan describes a new study showing that low-income families benefited when fathers took parenting classes. She writes that "fathers not only spent more time with their children than the controls did but were also more active in the daily tasks of child-rearing. They became more emotionally involved with their children, and the children were much less aggressive, hyperactive, depressed or socially withdrawn than children of fathers in the control group." However, the effect was greatest when moms attended classes alongside dads, implying (unsurprisingly) that parents who communicate and support each other are best for kids. But dads may have trouble getting the support they need.

Tarkan writes that, "as much as mothers want their partners to be involved with their children, experts say they often unintentionally discourage men from doing so. Because mothering is their realm, some women micromanage fathers and expect them to do things their way." The assertion is a little annoying, reminiscent as it is of a similar narrative about chores: women just don't let men do the laundry, the thinking goes, because it has to be done their way. Similarly stereotypical are the words of Dr. Kyle Pruett, co-author of the book Partnership Parenting. He says, "dads tend to discipline differently, use humor more and use play differently. Fathers want to show kids what's going on outside their mother's arms, to get their kids ready for the outside world." Pruett adds that dads "tend to encourage risk-taking and problem-solving" — but these are pretty sweeping generalizations. I know my dad didn't "encourage risk-taking," unless you call not driving on the freeway until you're eighteen years old a risk. And slotting parents into sitcom-ready roles (Mom the protector, Dad the one who lets you get dirty) only multiplies the obstacles they have to face in working together.

But there are some ways that larger social expectations harm both moms and dads. Tarkan quotes psych professor Philip A. Cowan, who says,

The walls in family resource centers are pink, there are women's magazines in the waiting room, the mother's name is on the files, and the home visitor asks for the mother if the father answers the door. It's like fathers are not there.

By treating moms like the primary parent, research centers and other social services just make it more difficult for dads to get involved — and maybe even perpetuate the notion that only Mom knows the right way to do things. Rather than accusing individual mothers of considering motherhood their "realm," we should be tackling the widespread cultural perception that women naturally know about child-rearing and men are just bumbling babysitters who show up every now and then to teach baseball skills. Cowan says parents need to stop criticizing each other so much — "Instead, they should be saying, ‘How can each of us be the kind of parent that we are?'"— but parenting experts have some large-scale recommendations that may be even more effective. Tarkan writes,

[P]ictures of families on the walls of clinics and public agencies should have fathers in them. All correspondence should be addressed to both mother and father. Staff members should be welcoming to men. Steps like these promote early and lasting involvement by fathers.

These may seem like small changes, but they would start sending the message that parenting is a cooperative process, not Mom's job and Dad's hobby. It's a message that moms, dads, and kids all desperately need.

Fathers Gain Respect From Experts (And Mothers) [NYT]
Paying More Attention To Fathers [NYT Well Blog]

Kaufman, who has a three-year-old son, notes that he understands the frustration people feel when they're subjected to out-of-control kids or lousy parenting methods: "I can't stand bad parents or bad children, either," he writes, "There are parents who are over-permissive to the point of absurdity. There are kids who are just hyper or obnoxious." But Kaufman argues that society, as a whole, confuses "bad children" and "bad parents" with kids who are just tired, or cranky, and parents who are doing their best to keep their kids under control, as "anyone who's been in charge of a toddler for more than three minutes knows that even the most perfect parent in the entire world can't prevent or stop every tantrum."

I'll admit that in my early twenties, I was one of those people who would start pouting as soon as I walked onto a plane and saw a toddler squirming about in his seat. "Oh great," I'd hiss to my boyfriend, "he'll be crying in ten minutes." I had no concern for the parents or the child, who were probably just as stressed about the flight and what would happen in the air; I saw them as an inconvenience to my own traveling, as if they should hop aboard the Magic School Bus or some such to reach their destination instead of flying on the plane with the rest of us. I was a complete crab when it came to crabby children, and I instantly blamed their parents for not being able to "control" their kid's tears. In short, I was a total jerk.

As Kaufman notes, there's a big difference between getting annoyed at a parent who allows little Suzie or Timmy to kick the seat repeatedly as if it's some type of adorable behavior and getting annoyed at a parent who is desperately trying to get Timmy to stop throwing his tantrums. It wasn't until my niece was born 7 years ago that I began to understand this; watching my sister and my brother-in-law handle her tantrum phase was rough, as I knew they were great parents and my niece was a great kid, but tantrums happen, and, as Kaufman notes, "Toddlers have to have tantrums. It's how they learn boundaries."

Now, whenever I hear a kid crying on a plane, my thoughts immediately move to sympathy for both the child and the parent; maybe the kid is teething, maybe she's just exhausted, maybe she's scared, poor thing. Every child, in some way, has become my niece or my nephew, and their parents my sister or brother-in-law. I am not a parent myself, but by trying to put myself in the other person's shoes (or even in the kid's shoes) has made me a much more understanding person. Of course, this doesn't mean that I still don't get extremely annoyed when I have to sit in front of someone who thinks it's just charming that little Billy likes to throw Matchbox cars at strangers, but taking the position that all crying or slightly obnoxious behavior in public on the part of children and/or their parents automatically makes them "bad" people isn't fair to anyone.

I don't think we live in a child-hating society, but I do agree with Kaufman's argument that the public does often make enemies of parents and small children who are just trying to live their lives. "I don't like screaming in my ear, either," he writes, "I also don't like people who wrestle the armrest away from me, people who lean their seat ALL the way back, and people who claim their suitcase is a purse and cram the overhead compartment with too many bags. But that's life. That's what traveling by air means. Heck, that's what it means to live in this world." Yes, kids can be annoying, but so can everyone else. It took me years to realize that the eyeroll from the 20 year old who thinks she knows everything can be just as painful and irritating as the screams of a 3-year-old who just needs to take a nap.

Why Does Our Society Hate Children [PsychologyToday]

Reports the Telegraph,

For married parents, each child makes them progressively happier, Dr. Luis Angeles, an economist at Glasgow University, found. Writing in the Journal of Happiness Studies, he concluded that "raising kids makes married people happier", and that "the more they have, the happier they are". By contrast those who are single, separated or living together are more likely to have negative feelings about parenthood.

Earlier studies had, apparently, suggested something quite different: as EurekAlert explains, "Previous research suggests that increasing numbers of children do not make people any happier, and in some cases the more children people have, the less satisfied they are with their lives. Rather bleakly, this has been attributed to the fact that raising children involves a lot of hard work for only a few occasional rewards."

By contrast, Angeles concluded that the "happiness" seemed to be a direct result of whether the kids were planned, more common in marriages. And there's an obvious correlation between said planning and financial security, and schedule flexibility - the same things that can make child-rearing most stressful.

What can we take away from this? Apparently, that there is a Journal of Happiness Studies. And that Michelle Duggar is the happiest woman in the world. And Angelina Jolie, very rich.

Children 'Make Married Parents Happier' [Telegraph]
Married With Children The Key To Happiness? [EurekAlert]

My first reaction was, admittedly, confusion, and also a sense that perhaps maternity leave was being played up as a vacation of sorts, as opposed to a time of adjusting to having a new child in the home and recovering from pregnancy and giving birth. However, Sam Baker of Red Magazine tells Wallop: "This isn't a working mum versus working non-mums argument. Nobody thinks maternity leave is a holiday. Employers, especially now, need to incentivise their staff in imaginative ways and that could involve offering leave. Some companies are already doing this."

Wallop sites one company, BT, that "offered its staff the right to take a year off, in return for taking a 75 per cent pay cut," a move that allows a "maternity leave" of sorts, for an extremely reduced salary, in order to cut costs for the company, allow workers to opt for time off and still maintain a job to return to—hopefully in a better economic climate. However, there is nothing in Wallop's piece about the benefits given to these employees, and I"m still not sure how, exactly, this matches up with a traditional maternity leave.

What do you think, commenters? Should a leave of absence be made available to all women, or does this make maternity leave seem like a vacation instead of a time of stress and physical recuperation? [Women Without Children Should Be Allowed Maternity Leave, Survey Says [Telegraph]

[Image via CPSU]

Because the kids in Milk are cool. Really cool. But also: The photography is fun, the fashion is well-styled and, in many ways, Milk kicks Vogue's ass.

Obviously child models are cute. But when shooting them on a blank background, the results could be meh. Instead, Milk pulls off vibrant, interesting portraits.

Instead of models jumping, you get models hamming it up. What's not to love?

There's an attitude here, and it says: "My allowance is paltry. Step it up."

So fresh-faced and fun!

Do you think she has a blog? Do you think she has a Twitter account? Do you think she knows who Madonna is?

I'm fully aware that these kids are being paid and that a professional photographer and stylist are creating the look of this shoot. And still: I'm fully buying the character this kid is playing. He's into chess, cheese and Wes Anderson movies.

If you don't let her watch Breakfast At Tiffany's again, she is going to hold her breath.

Um, can I hang out with you guys after school work?

She's obviously cooking up mischief.

Tyra asked her to be on America's Next Top Child Model, but this young lady was too busy.

"Really? You invited boys to your party? Seriously? How disappointing."

Ah, childhood — full of unicorn dreams and playing in abandoned car graveyards.

"For my next trick, I'll make Brussels sprouts disappear!"

"Attention! Playing with life size trucks is more fun than playing with toy trucks. Pass it on!"

I want to wear this tomorrow. Is that lame?

Just one example of how the photography is more inventive than Vogue.

Dear Anna Wintour: The tiny gauntlet has been thrown.

Earlier: Milk Magazine: Memoirs Of A (Child) Geisha
Milk Magazine Gets In Your Face With Breast Milk

Forbes dresses up the article with the obligatory Lindsay/Dina Lohan pic, and author Jenna Goudreau writes that the best-friend mom "dresses like her daughter, offers TMI about her personal life and tries to befriend her children's teenage friends." But watch out: "Moms who try to be befriend their teenage children end up leaving them motherless—at a time when they really need a mom most." It's pretty much common wisdom at this point that trying to be your kid's BFF isn't good parenting. But is this really such a huge social problem?

According to clinical psychologist Stephan B. Poulter, yes. He tells Goudreau, "This trend has become very popular. Just look at People magazine." Poulter claims 30% to 40% of moms are now best-friend moms, a number we hope he arrived at by some method more scientific than flipping through tabloids. So what's behind this "very popular" trend? Goudreau writes,

One theory as to why comes from Poulter, who suggests that there is a greater number of mothers who don't have the time or energy—due to long hours at work, financial stress or otherwise—to put into being a full-time mom. These women are pragmatists in that it's more emotionally rewarding—"easier" as Poulter puts it—to be a friend rather than a traditional mother figure. All that—plus the adage "40 is the new 20." Is anyone growing up?

The culprit is those selfish working moms who are too lazy to discipline their kids — and too skanky to act like proper 40-year-old women. Don't get me wrong — the pressure on older women to continue looking like high school students is upsetting. But articles like Goudreau's imply that it's their fault, that middle-aged women in America are just so into being sexy and having fun that they don't want to "grow up." This attitude — like many discussions of "age-appropriate" clothing — denies middle-aged women's sexuality and makes it sound like the only sensible thing for them to do is slice oranges for the soccer game. And it promulgates a pretty rigid notion of what it means to grow up.

This rigidity is on display elsewhere in Goudreau's article. She talks to author Susan Morris Shaffer, who expounds on mother-daughter bonds today. Goudreau writes,

Shaffer feels that this era presents a new opportunity for adult daughters and their mothers to become closer. Because young women are increasingly attending college, pursuing careers and getting married later, they have an "extended adolescence" in which the mother-daughter bond may be one of their strongest.

It's true that I and many other young women I know have close relationships with our mothers, relationships that are probably closer than they would be if we were married with children. But does that really mean we're in and "extended adolescence?" Goudreau's language is especially strange here, as it seems to indicate that getting an education and pursuing a career are "adolescent" things, while marriage is what really makes you an adult. "Extended adolescence" is a pretty common term lately, and while it's not always as blatant as this, it usually implies that even if you have a job and a degree, until you get married and have a baby you're some sort of ancient teenager.

I have no doubt that it's unhealthy for parents not to discipline their kids, or to base their self-worth on whether their children perceive them as cool. But I do doubt that moms acting "young" is the biggest problem facing kids today. And I don't believe we should be using the standards of the past — either for marital age or for "age-appropriate behavior" — to judge our lives in the present. Being unmarried doesn't make you a teenager, and wearing a miniskirt or going to a club doesn't mean you think "40 is the new 20." Can't media outlets write about childrearing without perpetuating tired stereotypes about what makes a good woman or a good mother? Maybe someday they will, but given its record on issues affecting women, Forbes probably won't be leading the charge.

Are You A Best-Friend Mom? [Forbes]